A/N: I do apologize- I felt that this one may have been a little dry, but necessary. Hopefully it picks up a little more! As always, my thanks to anyone reading, reviewing, and/or following. It is truly appreciated and helps keep me going with this thing.

It was quite by accident that John came across the notes Sherlock had left behind, though it took him quite a while to fully notice them. It really wasn't uncommon for there to be paper scattered across the flat, Sherlock's hurried handwriting scribbled across the scraps and pages, so of course John would come across numerous notations and ramblings when he finally got around to cleaning the flat. At first, he didn't think anything of it. That was, at least, until he found himself snooping through all of Sherlock's case files.

Yes, it was normal for John to find random verbal doodles all over the flat.

These, however… these were different.

These were unsettling and specific.

MORIARTY-

In big, bold letters, Sherlock had written the name on an envelope. He couldn't figure out if the fact that it was on an envelope was coincidence or intentional. An envelope. Why an envelope? If it had been purely coincidental, he needn't dwell on it.

That was all that the first one had read, and there had been nothing inside it, so John wrote it off as just more of Sherlock's writing gibberish. He thought that perhaps it had been written down after they finished closing up the case dealing with the Pink Lady, which was, after all, the first time the name had been so much as uttered to Sherlock. He was obsessed for a time, trying to figure out who –or what- Moriarty was. It was an all-consuming fascination, especially in the time period before he materialized into a person rather than an idea, so it made sense for one of Sherlock's written babblings to have been something as simple yet complex as Moriarty's name, and his name alone.

In hindsight, Sherlock's eagerness to unlock the enigma that was Moriarty triggered painful regret to settle in John's stomach. If only they had known…

John, to save his sanity, threw away the useless scrap of paper and tried his best not to think on it further. It didn't mean anything, after all.

He tried to tell himself that, but it didn't stop his heart from racing, and it didn't stop him from exploring the unorganized stacks with a new fervor. He kept hoping that maybe he would be lucky enough to find something that Sherlock had overlooked (impossible) or something that Sherlock had discovered but didn't bother to bring up to anyone else (more likely) because he just always had to keep up that stupid air of mystery until he solved the case and unveiled all of his brilliant deductions.

Heart pounding, hands shaking, John went through every single sheet of paper, every single notebook page, waiting for something to reveal itself to him.

The second one he found was a little more blatant.

You know you cannot win this one. You have, in the past, been nothing more than a simple preoccupation. You were a challenge, yes. You were entertainment, yes. But now, you have made this personal. I will crush you like the spider you are. This is no longer a game.

John found that one a few minutes after the envelope, only a short stack of paper below. His stomach knotted up. It had been written, no doubt, after the confrontation at the pool. John was more surprised at Sherlock's defensiveness of him than he thought he would have been. Of course he was surprised, though- how many times did Sherlock show that he was upset about something, that he actually gave a damn about people?

The anomaly of caring aside, why had he written it? John was stumped. Between the note and the envelope, the only option presenting itself was that he had planned on sending it to Moriarty. But why a handwritten note in an envelope? Why not a text, as he always preferred?

You have made this personal.

Was it for the sake of keeping it personal? Was it so it couldn't be traced back to him?

John closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. That was it. Sherlock had planned on threatening him, on going after him, and didn't want it to be traced back to him the way a text would have been.

"Oh, Sherlock... What did you get yourself into? What were you hiding?"

It was several hours and four cups of tea later that John even tried to find anything else. It had been two months since Sherlock's death, two months since John shut down and tried to rid himself of his grief, and having all of the new information and theories thrown onto him was overwhelming beyond words. However, overwhelming as it may have been, that didn't mean that he wasn't desperate to dig deeper, figure out what was going on. He needed this more than he could have ever explained even to himself. He wasn't sure if it was to chase the excitement that had been missing in his life, or to attempt to catch at least a glimpse of Sherlock's secrets, hold onto a piece of him.

John had been doing so well keeping his head and getting on with his life; He had been functioning like a normal human being and living a normal life. But the fact of the matter was that he wasn't a normal human being, and he didn't want to lead a normal life. He felt it should be okay, every so often, to reach for the life he had tasted for that short year. He felt he was entitled, every so often, to chase the madness that had made him feel so alive. He may not have been willing to go out and solve cases for Lestrade, or even to start his blog back up again. But this... having his own side project, keeping his nose clean but trying to figure out what the person dearest to him had killed himself over, well, that he couldn't let go just to maintain a normal life that he didn't even truly want.

With a new fervor, John threw himself back into the papers, the scraps, the folders and files and notebooks. He read everything, organized the case files, the ramblings, the scraps of nonsense. Hours, he spent engrossed in everything, desperation to find something, anything, gnawed at him. He was about to give up when something caught his eye. As he looked up toward the mantle from his place on the floor, he saw it: a piece of paper sticking out from the bottom of Sherlock's blasted "pet" skull. John leaped to his feet, ignoring the spasm of pain his muscles screeched at him in protest at standing up too quickly, and snatched the skull up, revealing the folded up piece of notebook paper tucked inside.

With shaking hands, he plucked it out and unfolded it. Don't get your hopes up, Watson. This is nothing. This is nothing. This is nothing. He forced his mind to repeat it over and over and over, trying not to feel too hopeful that he had found something useful or meaningful.

His heart stopped when he read what was inside.

"That..." John's voice was barely above a whisper. "That bastard!"